The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer. Concurrent with the expansion of networking technologies, an expansion in computing power has resulted in development of affordable computing devices capable of taking advantage of services made possible by modern networking technologies. This expansion in computing power has led to a reduction in the size of computing devices and given rise to a new generation of mobile devices that are capable of performing functionality that only a few years ago required processing power that could be provided only by the most advanced desktop computers. Consequently, mobile computing devices having a small form factor have become ubiquitous and are used to access network applications and services by consumers of all socioeconomic backgrounds.
Some platform and application developers are leveraging the power of modern mobile computing devices and mobile networking technologies to provide a variety of services to mobile computing device users. One such example service is augmented reality. In this regard, mobile computing devices may, in some situations, enhance the interaction that users have with their environment. Augmented reality involves the merging of real and virtual worlds. In some cases, augmented reality involves mixing real world image data with virtual objects in order to produce environments and visualizations in which physical and digital objects co-exist and potentially also interact in real time.
When incorporating augmented reality into a particular application or scenario, a user may be enabled to capture a live image or utilize a captured real world image and then add information to the image. A very common example of augmented reality is experienced frequently when watching a sporting event on television with streaming or otherwise intermittently presented score or other status information being overlaid onto the video of the sporting action itself. Another example use of augmented reality is the provision of a virtual tour guide, which may provide additional information about an environment in which a user is located by adding virtual content about real world locations to images of those locations.